


A Wintertide's Respite

by CypressSunn



Series: One Hundred and One Shots [4]
Category: Emerald City (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, F/M, Light Dom/sub, Smut, Winter, Yuletide, Yuletide 2017, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 07:04:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13048986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CypressSunn/pseuds/CypressSunn
Summary: The Beast lay dormant somewhere in Oz, beyond the deserts, or at the peak of some mountaintop. Its reign of fire since its wings were unshackled in the Prison of the Abject cut short just as it had taken the city. A dragon beat back by the tide of winter. The elements of flame and frost did not mix it seemed. But the seasons would not always be on their side; winter would not last forever. 'Nothing does, ' Dorothy thinks to herself, eyeing the window above where Lucas still waits. 'Nothing but the fear of what comes next.'





	A Wintertide's Respite

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alyse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyse/gifts).



Dorothy wakes to Toto panting in her ear and the sound of a beleaguered knight grumbling at the swatting tail in his face. “Good boy,” she yawns as the dog paws its way down Lucas’s back. Dorothy slips out of bed, pulling on her cloak and his boots- they’re closer and hers are lost to the whirlwind heap they left over the floor hours ago. Toto pads out the chamber door with Dorothy at his heels.

The hallways from her quarters are quiet and barren, snoring heard behind every closed door. It’s the early hours like this, Dorothy thinks, descending the stairs, that their lodgings seem like any other inn. Rugs and drapes everywhere, armchairs and tables littered with candles burned down to the wick, bowls of succulent fruits. The lectern at the center of the hall covered with cups emptied of all but the dregs of poppy seeds tells the real truth, however.

Toto dashes out the wooden doors the moment Dorothy pushes them open, revealing the haze submerging Emerald City. Winter weighs over everything, bone white snows, silvered overcast grays. The sky slumping close to the cobbles and carts, the huddled and hurrying. The rooftops above are a mystery shrouded in clouds. The sun should be rising, but there was no telling where. No certainty except there, between the drift and the frost, a stillness waits. A cold breath held that would not give out, uninterrupted by the early denizens of the walkways or the patrolmen at the gates.

The Beast lay dormant somewhere in Oz, beyond the deserts, or at the peak of some mountaintop. Its reign of fire since its wings were unshackled in the Prison of the Abject cut short just as it had taken the city, a dragon beat back by the tide of winter. The elements of flame and frost did not mix it seemed. But the seasons would not always be on their side; winter would not last forever. _ 'Nothing does, _ ' Dorothy thinks to herself, eyeing the window above, where Lucas still waits.  _ 'Nothing but the fear of what comes next.' _

Toto trots back with a sheen of snow over his fur, deciding to settle at the foot of the fireplace, a loose bone left there for him to gnaw on. The patrons of the hall are always generous with Toto. Dorothy is sure the poppy and drink have much to do with it. The rest, she assumes, are courtesans both equally pleased with the presence of a guard dog and healer paying her way with bandages and salves.

A healer who had turned down room and board at the Emerald Palace from the crown queen herself. Instead, she took up the offer of the Witch of the West, a dark corner room in a brothel where Dorothy could rest after plying her trade as a healer across the city. West could play at Dorothy’s benefactress if only to enrage her Northern sister.

In her chambers again, Dorothy toes off his boots. He’s drifted back to sleep on the featherbed. The sheer scarlet curtains slung from the canopy pull back and forth with his breathing. Reaching under the woolen covers, Dorothy’s chilled hands found warm, scarred skin. Lucas jolts up and curses.

“Out,” she tells him, throwing his clothes at him with a small petty smile.

“Again with this?” He groans at the edge of the bed, catches the shirt groggily but the trousers catch him aside his face.

“I kick you out every morning,” she reminds him, dispassionate as she can muster. She inspects the still smoking candle mounts along the walls, blows them out one by one.

“And you let me back in every night,” his voice husky as he puts his belongings aside, pulling at her waist. She follows the movement of his arms without complaint. Inhales as he presses a kiss to her stomach between the drape of her robe. “Every night, Dorothy,” he whispers above her navel, his mouth cresting up, up-

The higher this mouth climbs over her skin, the higher a denial wells up inside her, one she knows is untrue. Every dusk that set over the city found its way to lead him to her door. Always with a knock, him still and wordless. This night, his sword at his side had been bloodied as she was from her day's work of stitching and mending the common folk and soldiers alike. They had scrubbed each other’s skin with soap lye at her wash basin, leaving the water pink and cooling as she led him with clean hands to her bed, a curse she didn’t voice at her lips. She had promised herself she would not let him in again-

“And now its the morning,” she cuts out under the attention he lavishes to her neck, hoping in vain he doesn’t feel the thrill of her pulse there. “Same as every morning. Or couldn’t you tell by Toto’s tail in your face?”

Lucas pulls back, an almost ridiculous pout on his face. “He does that on purpose.”

“He hasn’t forgiven you,” she chafes back.

“Neither of you have.” It's somber and honest and the exact opposite of what Dorothy wants to hear from him. That’s the paradox of it all, the way the two hurts still root deep in her heart. The first; the doubt she feels every time he darkens her door. The second; how she misses him when she closes it behind him.

“I could stay. I could-”

“No,” she cuts him off, simmering and irate enough to almost make him recoil. “You have a mistress to answer to.”

“Dorothy,” he sighs. They’ve had this argument, the day she took up West’s offer for lodging. Lucas had hated the idea. Wanted her safe behind castle doors. Dorothy wouldn't have it, would have lived under the frozen bridges, the city catacombs, outside the overbooked inns and boarding houses, as long as it meant she didn’t have to see them, side by side in the splendor of the castle throne room. Heads bowed together in the war room, preparing for the spring thaw, for the winged Beast of fire to return. The white witch and her sworn sword. A man who answered to another name, who answered to another woman.

“That’s how this goes,” she says with bitter resolve, carding her fingers shy of painful through his short hair. “You wake and you pick up that sword and cloak and you go back out into the city… and you stop being Lucas. Because you’re Roan of the North,” he flinches under her, like he still hates the sound of that name out of her mouth. “Knight of Glinda the Good. So you can... be honest and stop pretending Lucas still exists in the daylight.”

“You think...” his voice is thin, he shakes his head. “You believe after all this,” he clutches at her, too hard, too close, “that Lucas is the one I’m pretending to be?”

The look in his eyes, Dorothy hasn’t seen since the toppled cottage they had almost destroyed each other in. Overbright and wild, like she is the last thing he may ever see. The last thing he would ever want to see. It’s then Dorothy feels a fleeting, dizzying need to believe him. That Lucas is real. That if he could put aside his vow of servitude with the same ease as his vow of matrimony, he would. But just as quick, it passes, leaving an ache in its wake, something more she does not want to ruminate on. Now or probably ever. So Dorothy does the only thing she can think of to end his searching, pleading stare. She clambers into his lap and takes what she wants. Hauling him down, she kisses him hard, scrapes of catching teeth leaving them both red-lipped and breathless.

Lucas is as ruthless in return as he bites and pulls and wants. His calloused hands are everywhere. At her shoulders, fistfuls of her hair, roaming her flanks, fingers lacing behind her, over the small of her back. It’s almost as bad as his earnest eyes, the feel of his entreatments over her body, searching for purchase, as if she were still likely to slip away in a gust of wind. It leaves her skin burning and taut. None of it is enough.

But damn it all if he doesn’t try. His mouth trails up to the crest of her breast, his lips moving in reverent motions at her collar. “Forgive me, forgive me,” an inaudible chant, but impossible to miss. He slides her cloak down her shoulders where they sidle in a heap around her hips. His hands settle in between the folds of the fabric, reaching into her. “Forgive me.”

She can’t. It’s not a realization that comes when she rolls her head back, or with the artless way she lifts herself to perch against him. It’s something she’s known since he’d brought her back. That they’ve done this all out of order. Fallen in and out of love before knowing each other, burning down the promise of a home they hadn’t finished building. And Dorothy knows that any good curse shouldn’t stop the first go-around. So he moves inside her, desperate and groaning, reconciling their bodies but nothing else. Pushing and driving for an absolution she can't find inside herself.

She rakes at the broadness of his shoulders, he digs blunt fingertips into hips. She’s full, seated against him, rocking, dragging, stretching against him. She pushes him back, flat on the bed. Moves her hands to the hollow of this throat, holds him there. Feels him swallow dully before he begs her to call him by his name. But she doesn’t give him that, instead takes and takes him down until he can’t form words but for the ache of her.

For the briefest moment flashes a glimmer and gold raise over her knuckles. Red rubies pulling tight around the backs of her hands, around his throat. He sees it, the Elements unmistakable and primed, hot at his flesh. He’s at her mercy inside and out and still, he throws his head back, keening, chin up. Relenting to give her ample access. The pressure and pleasure conflate together and Dorothy can't bite back the wail she lets out. Under her, he shakes feverish and spent with his release.

And for the near endless, heady moment that follows the chasm between them is nothing at all. She settles against Lucas, his panting, heavy breaths rising and falling in his chest matching in her own. The air around them is sedate, hot and saturated. Unmoving even; a pause, a respite not unlike the wait that looms over the city, but worse.

He rolls over to face her. "You know…” he murmurs to her. The slow, languid onslaught of kisses he presses to her mouth the only thing interrupting him. “You must know that I… Dorothy please-”

_ 'Frost and fire don’t mix.'  _ The thought rises unbidden, dredged up by Lucas's shuddering ministrations. But it's the truth. Her play at indifference, his overwrought desperation- as long as it continued, nothing is salvageable. All of it leads them to ruin long before spring, long before the Beast returns.

“Yeah,” she whispers back, merciful at last. “I love you too.”

There is little else said as they climb out of bed, dress and arming themselves. His sword. Her medical kit. He’ll be off to find Glinda, take his daily orders. And Dorothy knows there’s a man down in the fisheries who still needs his broken arm set if the swelling has gone down. A pregnant courtesan who needs balms for her back pain. An amputee in the queen’s court with bone spurs pinched by his metal prosthetics. A grizzled wanderer outside the city gates, always in need of blankets and bandages while he kept watch for brigands and deserters-

Toto yelps from the doorway, where Lucas kneels, tugging with great effort to remove his boot from the dog’s jaw. Lucas pulls the leather free but not without Toto’s teeth marks left sunk into the leather.

“Good boy,” she tells the animal again as he runs and flops on onto the bed. Lucas shakes his head with a warmed over exasperation.

“He’ll forgive you, y’know,” Dorothy trails off, motioning to Toto behind them. “Eventually.”

“And how long is it until eventually?” Lucas asks, slow and pensive, the doorknob under his hand. He's lingering at the threshold, idle even after sliding on his ruined boot. Waiting in the same fearful way Dorothy would recognize anywhere. Afraid of what comes next. Afraid of what might not.

Outside the window beside her, a hesitant snowfall creeps over Emerald City. Even without the ruby red gauntlets at her hands, Dorothy can’t be sure the turn in the weather is not the same as the turn inside of her. Still standing yet submerged and shaken in the snow globe of Oz, resigning herself to the truth at last. “When you don’t belong to anyone else," she tells him, “when you’re just ours. But only then, Lucas. Not before.”

And the door closes between them.

**Author's Note:**

> And that's all she wrote.  
> Except not really because I've half started and half written maybe three stories fueled by this Yuletide prompt. One of them became embarrassingly long and complex and needed to be put on hold in hopes of actually posting something rather than defaulting. I still have every intention of finishing that story and dedicating to you, dear recipient.  
> In the meantime, happy holidays and I truly hope you enjoyed our fic!
> 
> (oh, and also partially inspired by and written for my 101 Shots challenge, prompt #32: Snow)


End file.
